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New Steroid Testing in Baseball....

Baseball players and owners have reached a new agreement on steroid testing, and the much-harsher penalties for players testing positive will include suspensions on the first offense.

The agreement is expected to be announced Thursday from the owners' meeting in Scottsdale, Ariz.

Penalties will be more severe than those built into the current agreement. Sources familiar with the negotiations have told ESPN.com's Jayson Stark that the agreement will include the following components:

Suspensions on the first offense will carry a maximum length of 10 games, a baseball source told ESPN the Magazine's Buster Olney. Under the system in place for 2004, a player would have had to test positive five times before the first suspension.

All players will be subject to year-round random testing. Every major league player will be tested at least once a year.

There are no stipulations requiring that a player be tested more than once. But an unspecified number of players will be selected at random to be tested numerous other times throughout the year. So unlike the current system, a player would not know, following his one mandatory test, that he had no future tests to worry about for the rest of the year.

Players can now be tested during the offseason. In the first two seasons of the agreement, testing took place only between the opening of spring training and the last day of the season.

A large number of substances would be added to the list of banned drugs, including THG and various steroid precursors. The new agreement does not address the issue of stimulants.

Commissioner Bud Selig, asked in Scottsdale about an agreement, declined comment to The Associated Press but did say: "We'll have announcements to make [Thursday]." Gene Orza, the union's chief operating officer, also declined comment.

Bob DuPuy, baseball's chief operating officer, said he anticipated confirmation of a deal by the end of the owners' meeting.

"It will be wonderful once it's done, but I don't want to pre-empt any announcement, and I certainly don't want to pre-empt all the work the commissioner has done on this, so I'll reserve my comments until after it's announced," he said.

The sides spent the past month negotiating the deal after the union's executive board gave its staff approval to pursue an agreement on a more rigorous testing program. Some in Congress threatened to take action unless baseball reached an agreement on its own.

"I'm glad we could come to an agreement," said Chicago Cubs pitcher Mike Remlinger, who was briefed on the deal Wednesday. "It was the right thing to do. I think it was something that needed to be done, and I think players understand it needed to be addressed."

Tony Clark, another senior union leader, said public questions about steroid use had caused players to think about a tougher agreement.

"The integrity of our game was beginning to come under fire, and there are too many great players, past and present, that deserve to be celebrated for their ability to play this game at a very high level," the free-agent first baseman said in an e-mail to the AP. "If a stricter drug policy brings that level of appreciation back, we felt that it was worth pursuing."

Players and owners agreed to a drug-testing plan in 2002 that called for survey-testing for steroids the following year. Because more than 5 percent of tests were positive, random testing with penalties began last year. Each player was tested for steroids twice over a single five- to seven-day period.

A first positive test resulted in treatment. If a player tested positive again, he would have been subject to a 15-day suspension.

No player was suspended for steroid use in 2004.

Since the 2002 agreement, baseball has come under increased scrutiny for steroid use. Barry Bonds, Jason Giambi and Gary Sheffield testified before a federal grand jury in December 2003. Giambi and Sheffield admitted using steroids, according to reports by the San Francisco Chronicle. Sheffield said he wasn't aware when he used the substances that they contained steroids.

Bonds, according to the Chronicle, admitted using substances prosecutors say contained steroids.

"Everybody believed that the program we had in place was having an effect and definitely it was doing what it designed to do," Mets pitcher Tom Glavine, a senior member of the union, told AP. "but having said that, with the stuff that was going on and whatnot, it forced us to take a look at revising it or making it a little tougher. It was not a question anymore if that agreement was going to be enough. It was a question to address some of the new issues that came to light and get our fans to believe we were doing everything we could to make the problem go away 100 percent."

You wait and see....Barry's body is gonna breakdown and he will never get the record OR he will retire. Look at Sammy off of the juice.....lost a TON of weight, his body beagn breaking down and he even threw out his back sneezing. Imagine what Bonds will go through being considerably older.

"Maybe I was the only one, but I really felt like we could surprise these guys. Obviously, that was not the case."

I'm all for the testing.
I'm sick of another * for records.
I say ban all roid bois.

I agree, it's sad to see these records getting broke when EVERYONE knows these guys are on the juice.

I think ESPN had a before and after age 30 of Barry Bonds statistics. He hit more home runs, and he hit more home runs farther after age 30 than before? He would of NEVER gotten close to the record without the juice.

I am not agreeing to roid use but, like you have all probably heard, does the juice make your eyes better to hit a ball??? Yes, guys like Big Mac, Bonds and Sosa probably had great eyesight to begin with. A question that I have, is why haven't pitchers gotten bigger like certain hitters? I have opinions on the entire deal and I agree to better rules concerning steroids use. When someone gets paid so much to play a great game, they need to be a "natural" athlete...period!
With my experience with baseball, I could see the ball and where it was going sometimes before it reached to where I could hit it. I am not a pro though.. My eyes are not 20/20 without glasses or contacts. So, I say, baseball is a sport which takes a lot of mental power and not a lot of physical power. When players abuse the power aspect, they should be fined, suspended and/or fired. The players that have the natural power are the ones that are getting screwed here. That is my opinion.
Test all they want and lets play ball!

Let's put it like this: 5% of MLB players tested positive for steroids in 2004, and that DOESN'T count the guys using the same gear that Bonds, Sheffield, Giambi, etc. used (which is currently undetectable)

Bottom line is that it's still almost impossible to test for the gear that Bonds, Sheffield, Marion Jones, etc. were using. The "cream" and the "clear".

It's as nifty a designer-steroid that has ever been.....erm.......designed.

Still, apparently only a few know how to formulate it, now that the creator had to spill the beans in order to avoid jail, they'll probably have tests for it within 18 months.

And I agree with what others are saying, in that the public ridicule can act as a deterrent.

Especially with multiple offenses.

You can't just quit using in time for your steroid test. You've got to use some post-cycle therapy, or else your testosterone drops, while your estrogen stays elevated, and you develop feminine characteristics, like gynocomastia ("b*tch t*ts"), non-existent libido, etc.

Sosa is a good 20 lbs. lighter than he was in 1998, although muscle mass isn't directly related to strength, which is dependent on neural activity.

A guy like McGwire, if you take his HR-per-at bat average, has ALWAYS been fooling around with 60 HRs. The guy hit 38 (or whatever it was) by the All-Star break of his rookie year, for cryin' out loud. He simply couldn't stay healthy. Then, he went through a period where he kept fooling with his stance. As soon as he went pigeon-toed again, he took off. Again, from a HR to At-Bat perspective.

As far as his 1998 season goes, anyone in the weightlifting community knows that "Andro" is crap.....it does nothing.

The fact remains: Bonds admitted to using the cream & the clear, but nothing else.

The fact remains: the president of BALCO designed the cream & the clear, and says that they're 'roids. (along with Sheffield, Giambi, etc.)

I remember getting bashed awhile ago when i made my feelings known that Bonds was on some kind of steroid. It's not so much the muscle mass, as it is the facial features to me. His freaking head got huge. Human Growth Hormones will do that to you. If you think that getting bigger, stronger and faster has no effect on the speed of your swing and how far you hit the ball, well, you're in denial. The longer you can wait on a pitch before you pull the trigger the better, as it allows you to see more of the pitch. Advantage steroids. Barry Bonds and all his records will mean nothing to me.

What gets me about the new policy, other than it's pretty damn weak, is that the league is not allowed take a blood sample when testing. What's up with that? Add that to testimony brought up that one or more of the steroids being used is undetectable by MLB's current procedures and i fail to see how this will solve anything.

Yeah, you could say that the "Scarlet Letter" approach could dissuade players from using. But, the Olympics have a much more stringent policy and you STILL see people get busted and banned. That's because the committee is constantly upgrading it's testing procedures as new drugs are developed. It just seems to me that if you don't use a hardline approach, which the new policy is not, you'll always have people on juice. Especially if it is undetectable. New drugs are constantly being developed, and if you are not as tough as possible you'll never win.

New Steroid Testing in Baseball....

The new testing is flat-out lame, but I guess you can call it a step in the right direction. Only in America can baseball players juice up and basketball players can go get smoked up only to not really have it matter at all. It's amazing how above the law athletes are in this country. I personally would have liked to have seen a 3 month ban without pay for the first offense, a 6 month ban without pay for the second offense, and a life time ban for the third offense (hence three strikes and you are out of the game). Heaven forbid we hold these guys to any kind of standards...

Always one more,
You're never satisfied.
Never one for all with you,
It's only one for me

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